5.17.2009

17 Story Skyscraper Complete!

After nearly 2 months of near total monopoly of my 'hobby' time, I was able to complete the final assembly of my 17 Story Skyscraper! This building was inspired by some of the buildings that I found here using the DPM "Hilltown Hotel" kit. I used 3 kits to complete this building.

This is a fairly typical, mid-century American style skyscraper. I really wanted a larger, gothic looking structure to sit in the center of my city, and in general I'm fairly pleased with how its turned out.

Some of the features I added to it:

• A "Starburps" and a "Pret A Manger" on the ground floor.Both the Starburps and Pret a Manger signs are backlit with LED's on clear plastic on which white polyster adhesive paper is applied that was printed using a color laser printer (Kinkos). If you've read some of my earlier posts, I've been using the standard water-slide decals and color ink-jet printer, but was just not getting the color quality that I wanted. This white adhesive paper works great for these applications, providing almost commercial-level quality (although the laser toner will rub off easily).• The "Starlight Lounge", which is on about the 12th Floor or so, and features color-changing LED's (in this case I again used the color laser copier from the neighborhood Kinkos and but print my art on transparent, overhead projector sheets and not the white adhesive paper used for the signs on the ground floor).

I spray-painted it with PolyScale "Concrete" and gave it a wash with Games Workshop Brown and Black ink, which really 'filled' in the cracks and makes the details in the castings pop out! Its not seamless, of course, as the kit only offers a couple of methods of doing cornices, so with some Games Workshop 'green stuff' was able to 'fake it' a bit in some areas so that the building appears to have the cornices and abutments where they should be.

The great thing, with this big project out of the way, I can spend some time on some smaller projects and start to enjoy the summer!

Hi Jerryim a big fan of your layout. to the point where iam modeling my layout based on yours.,:)Looking at your layout plan, do you have a list of the actual track(sizes, switches, etc) that comprise the layout. It would be a lot easier than looking at the plan i guessing.thanksKenny

About Me

I'm into N Scale to have fun. Growing up my Dad was really big into HO (U.S.A. of course, mostly Western U.S. roads like Great Northern, Milwaukee Road, Northern Pacific, etc...) and he built me a small N Scale layout which I enjoyed as a small boy. Of the various trains I had at the time, the brand 'Minitrix' stuck in my head. As the years passed, N Scale was forgotten as new interests took my time.
As a new parent, I got back into model trains through O Gauge (Lionel and MTH). However, the cost of this scale, and the space needed for the sort of layout I wanted, made it a very frustrating hobby. Then one day at a hobby shop in California, I came across the Trix 2003 catalog; Inside this catalog were beautiful models of trains across Europe shown on beautiful layouts - and I was converted! It took a few years, but most of the O Gauge was sold (or stored) and I used the funds to start my new fantasy in N Scale.
Soon, I also discovered the amazing trains of Japan in N Scale, and begin my quest to build an interesting urban layout in a complete fantasy setting where the great trains of the world can run side by side!